Find a Band:
So you’re booking a show and you need a musician or a band? You have a lot of options and it is very easy these days to book musical entertainment for your next event.
1. Use an entertainment booking site.
This is about as easy as it gets. Websites like: Gigmasters, Gigsalad, the Knot, Wedding Wire, Styckie, all have databases of musicians for you to pick from. Google a website that sounds fun and start searching. Each site has instructions on how to go about booking the artist you like.
2. Find the artist directly.
Keeping an eye out at open mic nights, live concerts and simply typing in your city or area followed by the word “musician” and scrolling through the videos and seeing which ones you like the best. For example, if you live in Los Angeles, CA type “Los Angeles, CA musician” into youtube and start looking through the videos to find one that looks like someone who might fit. This can be a whole lot of fun because you can find some really great internet treasures using this method.
3. Make them come to you.
One of the most unused resources for booking entertainment is Craigslist. Yes. Seriously. Here’s the catch: your placement will cost $10 to post but will stay up for over 30 days, which is longer than enough time to attract some entertainment options and a significantly lower price than what any 3rd party booking sites are going to charge
If you don’t have an account, set one up, it’s free, requires no commitment and hardly any effort.
1. Go to www.craigslist.org and log in
2. create a posting (upper left hand corner of the site)
3. Choose a location that is closest to you (even if the selection doesn’t give your exact location, just pick which one is relatively close to you.
4. Choose “Gig Offered”
5. Choose “Talent Gigs”
6. Fill in the details of the event
7. Confirm that the map is correctly displaying your location
8. Upload any artwork, promo materials, associated with the event
9. Confirm your selection and await a slew of very unprofessional responses with a few great responses. Follow up with the great responses and ignore the awful ones.
